US 2008 in New Orleans has been my best ApacheCon so far! Brain dump ahead.

Great socializing and networking, which should lead to new exciting new projects in the near future.

My two talks were well received as far as I can tell.

Nice emerging buzz about Sling. Free polo shirts helped - well done Carsten! We have to do something about our docs and examples so as to not scare people away, in the meantime I'm sure the Sling folks will be happy to offer guidance on how best to structure things if you want to try it.

Big thanks to everybody involved in this very successful event - it is impossible to mention everybody here, so I'll just pick and choose: Shane Curcuru who did a great job as the conference lead. The Stone Circle team for making everything happen in a flawless way.

Thanks to President elect Obama for allowing me to spend a historical day in the US.

Thanks to Glen Daniels for finding the jam session places - the first one was not too hot from the musical point of view (drumming on a beer keg only goes so far), but interesting to visit - ever seen a laundromat in a bar?

Thanks to the folks (sponsors IIUC) who organized the parade on Thursday evening. Walking in the streets following the great Rebirth Brass Band with cops opening the way on their nice Harleys was awesome.

Thanks to the New Orleans people for being so nice and friendly, even though I sometimes had a hard time understanding them. I'll work on that.

For some reason, swimming in the outdoor pool at 7:30AM on a foggy day made us suspect in the eyes of the security guards. Normal hotel customers don't do that I guess, but who said Swiss Apache folk are normal hotel guests?

Thanks to the local musicians for playing so well.

On Tuesday a few of us escaped from the barcamp (which was great, but one cannot do everything I guess) for a swamp tour with Cajun encounters. Definitely recommended, our guide was a genuine Cajun, born in the area and with lots of stories to tell. I didn't bring a camera, but photos should be available on Flickr.

That's for the "best ApacheCon" part - the "worst ApacheCon" is about jetlag taking almost a week to go away, and leaving me in a miserable state on Tuesday when I had a lot of work to do to finish preparing my talks and for the Big Release.

For some reason, many of us had a hard time with jetlag this week. That might be related to the food (deep fried everything) or the lack of fresh air and sunlight. Not that it wasn't sunny, but sunset around 6PM means one does not see much natural light if following the conference sessions.

See you in Amsterdam in March for ApacheCon EU 2009!

(long post hey - that's what you get for locking me in planes for about 10 hours ;-)